When challenged about his claims, Lula said: “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker.

That’s probably a stranger statement, when you think about it, than Lula’s first one. Not only is it bizarre that Lula thinks not a single lender of subprime mortgages or derivatives trader or quant or anyone else mixed up in this mess might have been black, but after all, Lula is Brazilian, and Brazil has an enormous black population:

Brazil has the largest population of black origin outside of Africa with, in 2007, 7.4% classyfing themselves as preto (black skin color) and 42.3% as pardo (brown color). The latter classification is broad and encompasses Brazilians of mixed ancestry, including mulattos and caboclos, making the total 49.5%. The largest concentration of Afro-Brazilians is in the state of Bahia where over 80% of the people are descendants of Africans.

Are none of these people employed as a banker? In Bahia, for example? Or has Lula just not met any? Or, because they are black, would such people by definition be absolved of any wrongdoing (remember; only whites can be racist)?

As for Lula himself, I suppose he appears to be white (I’m not up on the finer points of these distinctions), although hardly blue-eved, and not a banker:

the prior version was jewish bankers, the current one is all white ones… why? because if they would have worked to remvoe all whites during world war ii, they would have succeeded… they didnt think they would come to the rescue of the jews.

These “leaders”, the ones who’ve pin-pointed the cause of the world’s problems as racial, nationalist, or capitalist, seem to be popping up more and more. There’s an unmistakable, I think, “bloodthirsty” quality to these people. I’m thinking the global financial mess may become the least of our problems.

I met Lula da Silva briefly in August of 1982 in Sao Miguel Paulista in Sao Paulo when I was there living with some Maryknoll and Jesuit priests in the favelas. It was well known that he was a Marxist then. In those days there were death squads and torture being done by the military government and I knew of cases that happened during my stay in Brazil. So, Lula had to be very careful since he was a target. I’m guessing that he was not nabbed because he was high profile.

I got no impression of the man. He was difficult to read. Plus, I only knew a few words of Portuguese.

You have to understand that his popularity derives from the poor in the favelas. These are people who largely have no hope and the Marxists were dangling hope before them. This is why I have stated here and elsewhere that capitalism is a superior economic system, but it requires a moral people who will endeavor to help one another. When there is extreme heartlessness on the part of all of us who prosper, and the marginalized and poor are in depressing circumstances, the Marxists are going to capitalize on this and increase their power. This is exactly what Lula has done in Brazil. This is exactly what our Communist leader has done in our country.

The founders of our nation knew that the Republic and its Constitution required a moral people to keep it. So far, we are proving ourselves unworthy of the sacrifices they made and our men in arms have made to keep us a free people.

I’ll wait for the leader of a European country to say all the violence, instability and poverty in Africa is caused by those dark-eyed, nappy-headed men who have no idea how to run a small country without resorting to theft of the treasury and wholesale murder of political opponents. Like Mugabe. Hell, like Obama’s absent father.

FredHjr said: “This is why I have stated here and elsewhere that capitalism is a superior economic system, but it requires a moral people who will endeavor to help one another. When there is extreme heartlessness on the part of all of us who prosper, and the marginalized and poor are in depressing circumstances, the Marxists are going to capitalize on this and increase their power. This is exactly what Lula has done in Brazil. This is exactly what our Communist leader has done in our country.

The founders of our nation knew that the Republic and its Constitution required a moral people to keep it. So far, we are proving ourselves unworthy of the sacrifices they made and our men in arms have made to keep us a free people.”

You keep hitting the nail on the head! I have endeavored the last few months to send a portion of my tithe and offerings to one of the Children’s homes that the Baptist Churches run. I began feeling burdened to support Orphanges run by the Church. Then not long after that the pastor at the church I have been visiting went on a multi week push for adoption and support of Orphanages. This apparently had been in the planning stages for a while. There is an organization within this large Church that is attempting to begin a nationwide push for this within churches.

We have a somewhat similar spectacle taking place here in Indonesia, although the target isn’t bankers. The economy here has taken some hits, and will take more to be sure, but it continues to chug along, and people are used to getting by on relatively little. The President, former Army general Susilo Bambang Yudhyono (“SBY”) is a reasonable, if plodding, sort who isn’t one for bold, aggressive measures of any kind until they become unavoidable. Even then, it’s like pulling teeth. So far it’s worked with the economy, and SBY remains the leading candidate in the Parliamentary and Presidential elections coming up in April and July. (I won’t even begin to describe the Indonesian electoral process, except to say that it’s complex).

However, it’s a different story over at the Health Ministry. The minister, Dr. Siti Fadillah Supari, is a woman of Islamic extremist tendencies, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, and certifiable whackjob. Despite the fact that Indonesia has the world’s highest incidence of H5N1 (bird flu) deaths, she has prohibited the sending of H5N1 cultures (among others) to overseas health organizations like WHO and NIH because of her stated belief that it would be turned over to those evil, profit-making pharmaceutical companies for their own research. Uhhh, yeah. Kinda hard to develop treatments without cultures, doncha think, Doc? She then says Indonesia will produce its own medicines to treat bird flu. Quick, Doc, name one Indonesian pharma company (and not one of the local subsidiaries of North American, Australian, or European companies, either). Can’t? No cutting-edge medical research institutes either? Well, no matter. Those evil Westerners would just use the cultures to produce biological warfare agents to kill Muslims and Indonesians anyway (yes, she said this), so we (Indonesians) are better off without them. That’s what she says she thinks the US Naval Medical Research Unit (NAMRU-2), that’s been here since 1970 or so, is really doing. That, and spying, of course. There’s a lot more that she has said and done that effectively cripple Indonesia’s ability to deal with its rather large health issues, but you get the idea.

Unfortunately, this nutcase is quite popular, so SBY can’t just dismiss her without damaging himself politically. Although most of her remarks are in the Indonesian language and not widely translated or reported outside of Southeast Asia, she has the same kind of mindset that Lula has. So while her words don’t have the same global impact as Lula’s comments about the blue-eyed bankers, her views on medical research have the same chilling effect on cooperation with the wider medical community.

By targeting bankers and the compensation contracts of financial executives, we are having sand kicked in our eyes by The Big Mack Daddy and his buddies at Freddie and Fannie. They are doing everything conceivable to deflect blame away from where most of it belongs: The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, the shakedown lawyers who were suing the banks for “discrimination,” and the 1995 pitching out the window of any kind of underwriting standards – and that dilution spreading through to the rest of the mortgage products.

It’s being done to protect a socialist policy of giving mortgage loans to people who cannot possibly pay the loan back.

On one hand, the success of his first 5 years of his administration was made possible exactly by those bankers, with the pre-crisis global growth spurt.

On the other, Lula’s speech writers come from a wing of the party not allowed anywhere close to economic matters. They write speeches for an imaginary anti-colonialist leader from the sixties. The blue eyed blond reference comes from one of them, I doubt they can grasp the implication. In the other world economic crisis of this magnitude the proto-Hitlers indeed blamed Jewish bankers.

In the end Lula had to go out and explain the remark over and over. And it gets worse at every attempt. Now it became a cry in defense of African and Latin American immigrants in Europe. The odd thing is that Brazilian immigration laws are particularly draconian. Just ask a typical Bolivian worker in a an apparel sweat shop in São Paulo.

As one poster already stated, the name Franklin Raines just needs to be whispered here – the first black CEO of a Fortune 500 company did a lot for those admiring him when he was found guilty of accounting corruption. Not to mention his role in sub-prime. Do I care that he’s black? Of course not… Why should Lula care that I’m white?

About Me

Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon. Read More >>